Breed Conservation Strategy

Breed Conservation Strategy1. Aim to maintain representation of all the founder animals

2. Identify the three rarest founder bloodlines and maintain these by a line breeding system

3. Owners of cattle with the highest representation of the three founder bloodlines should be asked to select from Society recommended bulls

4. Try to ensure that these breeders notify the Society before castration or disposal of offspring.

5. Five lines are to be identified from the population which when bred in a cyclic manner will produce cattle with a low inbreeding coefficient - ie below 6.25%

6. Breeders may,if they wish use the Geniped system to check the inbreeding coefficient of the progeny of any proposed mating

7. Maintain AI bulls by a line breeding system. The use of conservation bank semen would be dependent upon agreement betwen the breeder and the RBST giving the RBST the option to collect semen from any male offspring.

8. Maintain the diversity of AI bulls by adding those which produce offspring with a low inbreeding coefficient across a large proportion of the herd to the AI stocks.

9. Push forward the breeding programme for the starred animals

10. A new grading up policy is deemed unnecessary unless the inbreeding coefficient can be seen to be unable to be controlled by the use of the Geniped analysis system.

The object of ten point strategy above is to minimise inbreeding. The Directors would like as many members as possible to get involved whether simply by asking the Registrar to check the coefficients of co-ancestry for any proposed bull across your herd before you buy or whether you wish to be part of the cyclic breeding system. -------------------------------------------